FAIL
by Amry
Summary: A collection of humorous oneshots relating to Mello and how much he fails. Brought up to T for language crack Fifth: Return of Rhymes with Fail
1. Rhymes with Fail

Mello watched Misa Amane through narrowed eyes, trying to keep an eye on her and the enormous man she was with without being noticed himself. He didn't exactly blend into a crowd, but from behind a convenient alley wall across the street he could see them perfectly. He wondered briefly if Matt was all right back at the apartment with nothing to do, but dismissed this thought – he had plenty of research on his plate, and he was nothing if not adept at entertaining himself.

Mello's cell phone suddenly began to vibrate. He pulled it out and glanced at the number on the screen – it was Matt. He flipped it open and put it to his ear. "Yeah?"

"Hey, Mello. I was thinking." Faint squeaking accompanied Matt's voice; he was spinning in his rolling chair as he spoke.

Mello waited a moment. "You were thinking…?" he prompted when no reply came.

"Well… you know your last name? It's Keehl, isn't it?"

"Matt!" Mello hissed. "Don't say that out loud! This could be tapped for all I know—"

"Well," Matt pressed on, "I was thinking. If you say it right, it rhymes with 'fail.'"

Mello shut his eyes briefly, trying to quell his bubbling homicidal urges. "I'm tailing Misa Amane right now, Matt," he said through clenched teeth. "I really don't care what my name rhymes with."

"No, I'm not kidding!" Matt said urgently. "I mean, look at how much you've failed at since you started with this—"

"I didn't _fail_!" Mello snapped, turning away from the street. "There were setbacks, yeah, but I didn't _fail_ at anything!"

"Yeah, because your first hostage dying on you and getting your hideout assaulted and blowing yourself up and losing your name and the Death Note to L, no, to fricking _Kira_ don't count as failures—"

"Shut up!" Mello snarled, his hand involuntarily twitching in the direction of his gun. "Near's had just as many setbacks as I have and you're not calling _him_ a failure!"

"He got his hideout assaulted, too, sure, but he escaped with his face intact. And he's still got three people left alive as opposed to your one. And he's not living in the building with the single lowest rent in Manhattan."

"It's your apartment, Matt."

"Whatever. I still think it's because of your name that you fail. Because it rhymes. No way that's coincidence."

Mello took several deep breaths. "Look, you idiot, that has absolutely nothing to do with anything. I bet Near's real name rhymes with something stupid, too."

"I dunno. But 'Near' doesn't."

"Yeah, it does. Like… uh…" Mello thought hard for a moment. "Well, something."

They were silent for a moment, racking their brains. "…Um, 'mere'?" Matt offered. "Like, 'a mere trifle'?"

"That's just dumb."

"Fear?"

"Makes him sound intimidating. He's about as intimidating as a cream puff."

"'Smear'?"

"Like a smear on the pavement?"

"Yeah, like that."

Mello smirked. "That works. So is he gonna get hit by a truck or fall off the Empire State Building because his name rhymes with 'smear'?"

Matt was silent. "Well, it could," he said after a moment. "Your name's too much of a coincidence."

With a derisive snort, Mello stepped back into the sunlight, training his eyes once more on the street. "Shut up and get back to your research. I have to tail…" He trailed off, searching for Misa. She and her bodyguard were gone. "Where's Amane?"

"What?"

"She's gone! I was having this idiotic conversation with you and now she's gone!" He lowered his sunglasses and stared wildly around the street, but who knew when she had left? "Dammit, who knows when we'll find her again?"

He should have seen it coming before he opened his mouth. Matt laughed. Before Mello could slam his cell phone shut, Matt declared with all the wounded retaliation of a twelve-year-old, "FAIL!" and hung up, leaving Mello seething on the street corner.


	2. Fail Dryer

[For those of you who don't get the joke – in the last chapter of volume 11, Matt appears wielding a gun that looks EXACTLY like a hair dryer. No joke. I busted out laughing, and some time later, with collaboration with furvacatta, this was the result.

"Hey, Matt, I'm gonna take a shower."

"Don't let me stop you." Matt squinted in concentration, stabbing the DS stylus down with all the dexterity of a kung fu master. He barely noticed the squeaking of the rusty faucets in the bathroom or the thud of two combat boots hitting the dingy wall, so intent was he on defeating the legion of fictitious enemies crowding his screen.

Several minutes passed. The water shut off. Steam wafted into the tiny room from under the closed door, and a moment later the fan kicked on.

"Matt!" Mello's voice echoed from the bathroom.

"Hm?" Matt didn't look up from the DS.

"Can I use this hair dryer?"

"Whatever—aw, crap—" The game suddenly beeped and he poked the screen frantically, muttering, "Nonononononono—oh, shi—ugh." Mournful music played and he tossed the DS down in disgust. "Frigging zombies."

Suddenly, he looked up. "Wait." He frowned. "I don't have a—"

BANG.

"Holy—!" He dove into the bathroom and almost tripped over Mello, lying on the floor with Matt's smoking gun in his hand. A thin trickle of blood bled onto the wet tiles.

Matt bit his lip and glanced between Mello, the gun, and the DS lying abandoned on the couch. "Um… oops."


	3. You've Got Fail

[Just so you all know, Mello died in the last chapter. These are one-shots; there's really no continuity to them. Thanks for the reviews, btw.

In the weeks in which Mello had taken up residence in it, Matt's apartment had ceased to resemble a living space so much as a showcase of illegal technology available to those who knew where to find it. Every surface had some sort of sleek black-and-silver piece of equipment on it, contrasting the pizza boxes and candy wrappers that littered the floor and the mildew creeping down the walls. In the center of the coffee table was Mello's personal laptop, a device with which Matt was not permitted to tamper even under the most perilous of circumstances. This was Mello's link to the world, and he'd be damned if Matt was going to destroy it with Spyware acquired from some shady MMORPG.

Mello entered the apartment as he did every evening, throwing back his hood with a sigh as soon as he closed the door and tossing his sunglasses on the couch. Matt waved from a camera next to the window. "Yo."

Mello ignored him. He picked up a chocolate bar from the stack next to the TV, plopped down in a folding chair beside the coffee table, and opened his laptop. Matt rolled his eyes and went back to the camera.

A quick run of Mello's LiveJournal revealed no new comments, much to his disappointment, though there was a promising message on his MySpace from a Spanish gangster he'd been trying to contact for weeks. International news was the same as always – three new countries had declared for Kira, the one prime minister who'd said he wouldn't was dead, and the wild rumors about the SPK's escape from a mob of rabid Kira worshippers were finally dying down.

With a growl, Mello clicked savagely on his email. As if Kira hadn't been putting him in enough of a bad mood, Near had to go and pull off a miraculous escape right in front of Kira's face—

_"You've got fail."_

The chocolate fell from Mello's mouth and landed in an empty pizza box. Matt glanced up. "Huh?"

Mello refreshed the page.

_"Welcome. You've got fail."_

Matt could not repress a snort. He ducked a crumpled-up candy wrapper and leaned over to see the screen. "What the crap?"

Mello's hands were trembling. Every visible muscle was locked. "_You_ did this."

"I never touch your laptop."

"It was you! I know it was you!" Matt suddenly found himself backed against the wall with cold metal against his temple and Mello's combat boot pressed rather painfully into his toes. "No one else is in the same room as this laptop for twelve hours every day! No one else could hack fricking AOL and change my mail message! I'm going to _kill_ you!"

"Mello, calm down!"

"I don't _fail_! I don't know why the world is so convinced that I _fail_ when I don't!"

"I swear it wasn't me!"

"_Then who was it_?"

"It was—it—well, I don't know, but it wasn't me!" Matt tried to inch away, but Mello trapped him with an out-flung arm. "It's a glitch or something! I swear I didn't touch your laptop! Check for fingerprints!"

Mello glared into Matt's eyes a moment longer, then slowly lowered the gun. "Okay," he said. "Fine. It's a glitch. A really, really stupid coincidence. That's it."

Matt relaxed marginally. "Yeah, that's right, Mello, it's just a—"

"_You really expect me to believe that_?"

Matt threw himself behind the couch an instant before Mello emptied a clip into the upholstery. The sound of bullets thudding into polyester was audible even over Mello's maniacal shouts, and Matt prayed that he wouldn't come around to the other side of the couch in search of a moving target.

A crash interrupted the shooting. The gunfire stopped. An instant later, Mello somersaulted over the back of the couch, followed by a rain of debris as every electronic device in the room exploded simultaneously.

There was a shocked, smoky silence.

When it became apparent that nothing in the near vicinity was likely to fall on them, Matt dared to raise his head, brushing bits of silicone out of his hair. The couch, miraculously, had survived the explosion. Mello sat beside him, rigid, staring straight ahead as though afraid to turn around and survey the damage.

"I shot the power outlet," he said hoarsely. "Everything was connected to that." Slowly, his head swiveled to face Matt, a look of utter hopelessness in his eyes. "_Everything_."

"Not everything," Matt said. "Your laptop was wireless. And I had my Xbox in the other outlet."

"Three million dollars," Mello whispered. "That's three million dollars _gone_."

"Well… yeah, that kinda sucks."

Slowly, Mello stood. He faced the wall a moment longer, steeling himself for what lay behind him, then took a deep breath and swiftly turned around.

The room was in ruins. The walls were streaked black, the television was melting in on itself, Matt's Xbox was now fused to the remains of the satellite radar, and a faint veil of smoke hung in the air. Mello stared around at the wreckage.

Matt stood and patted Mello's shoulder awkwardly. "Tough, man. But hey—look!" He pointed to the coffee table beside the window, where Mello's laptop sat, somehow untouched. "That survived, at least."

The laptop beeped twice. _"You have—one—new fail," _it said cheerfully.

Mello's eye twitched.

The sound of microchips splintering on pavement twenty floors down was music to his ears.


	4. Fail by Any Other Name

[Maybe these will start having something resembling continuity. It makes it funnier in places, I think. And I had to do something with Matt's name, even though I personally write it as Miles, not Mail. Enjoy. XD

Mello hated being out in public. Since he'd melted half his face, disguise was pretty much out of the question, no matter how dark his sunglasses or strategically combed his hair; anyone with even a rudimentary description of him would recognize him from a crowded Tokyo city block away. Being in Japan, where a natural blonde was about as common an occurrence as an octopus attack in a sushi restaurant, didn't help matters.

He brushed his hair further over the left half of his face as he followed Matt into a small Tokyo bank. Matt hadn't bothered to disguise himself at all except to wear a slightly darker-tinted pair of goggles. He ignored the wrinkled noses of the other customers forced to stand in his cloud of cigarette smoke and approached the teller's desk, leaning across to give an easy smile to the pretty girl behind the computer.

"Hi there," he said in accented Japanese. "I'm making a withdrawal."

"Y-yes, sir," the girl said, slightly alarmed at his forwardness. Matt grinned and leaned toward her a little more. There was a flurry of offended whispers behind them. Mello growled inwardly. _Draw a little more attention to us, why don't you? _

The girl fixed her eyes on her computer screen, determined to remain professional in the face of this hormonal typhoon. "Name, sir?"

Matt winked. "You wouldn't be able to pronounce it. Just gimme the paper and I'll sign, and you can copy it in there."

"You couldn't have used an ATM?" Mello muttered in English.

"Nope," Matt said, glancing over his shoulder. "My real account is totally locked up. You can't get money out of an ATM with it."

"You know Roger said never to use our real names on anything! And why can't you use any of your other accounts?" Mello was drawing more annoyed eyes now, and he resisted the urge to pull up his hood. They didn't need to look any stranger.

"Well, duh," Matt said. "If I use my real name, they'll assume it's a fake name because I'm using it. And those other accounts are empty. You blew up three million dollars' worth of equipment, remember?"

The teller cleared her throat before Mello could tell him what to do with his three million dollars, and Matt turned back to her. "Sorry," he said. "What do you need?"

She pushed a slip of paper across the desk toward him, careful to pull her hand away before he could grasp her fingers. "Sign at the bottom, please," she said.

Matt picked up the pen chained to the desk and scribbled in almost-illegible hiragana. Mello's stomach clenched involuntarily at the sight of the name – how could he be so brazen as to use an account with his real—

No way.

No. Fucking. Way.

Matt felt a gloved hand clench hard on the back of his neck as he put the pen back. "_Mail_?" Mello hissed, so quietly that only Matt could hear the homicidal intent in his voice.

"Yeah," Matt said, inexplicably breaking out in a cold sweat. "Miles doesn't work and that's the closest the kana gets—"

"_Mail_?"

"Yes, now stop saying it before someone—"

The hand clamped down harder. "You spelled it that way on purpose."

"Spelled it what way?!"

"_It's one letter away from fail_!"

"Oh God, Mello—Mello, put the gun down. Mello, you don't want to do this. It's not the teller's fault, Mello, she didn't name me, there's no point in—"

BLAM.

"…Dammit, Mello. She was hot."

The teller was crumpled on the desk, stone dead.

The bank had frozen at the sound of the gunshot. Every person there stared at Mello and Matt. The teller at the next desk over fainted, but no one paid her any attention. Matt grinned weakly at them all and raised his hands. "Mello," he said through the side of his mouth, "You're an idiot. You'll have to kill them all now or there'll be witnesses."

Mello's sunglasses had slipped with the recoil of the first shot, and the look in his eyes was terrifying. He bared his teeth in a maniacal grin, twisting his mutilated face, and raised his gun.

They torched the bank to the ground before they left, leaving the bodies inside. Matt's bank statement blackened and curled at the center of the inferno, the ink crumbling to erase his name.


	5. Return of Rhymes with Fail

(I think I'm getting repetitive here. XD Thank you so much for the reviews during my long absence!)

Mello entered the apartment, slamming the door against the wall so hard Matt, in the other room, swore he heard plaster crack. A few seconds later Mello slammed the door shut and a cockroach fell from the ceiling onto the keyboard of the laptop in front of Matt.

THUD. SLAM. Two steel-toed boots hit the wall, leaving black marks on the wallpaper. Mello punched the wall for good measure as he passed it.

Matt stared at him as he walked into the room and threw himself onto the couch with a snarl. The cockroach wriggled forlornly on the keyboard. "Dude, Mello," he said, "What happened?"

"'Dear Mello,'" Mello muttered, staring at the ceiling, his face contorted with fury. "'Dear fucking Mello...'"

Matt threw up his hands. "Whoa! No! I said _'Dude'_, Mello!' What kind of--"

Mello drew a gun and pointed it at the cockroach. Matt managed to jump up just as Mello put a bullet in the laptop.

There was no more cockroach.

Matt stared at the smoking remains of the laptop. He decided to refrain from mentioning the sixteen World of Warcraft characters Mello had just banished to oblivion and instead said cautiously, "Hey, man, is everything okay? What happened?"

In answer Mello held up a small piece of paper. Warily, Matt bent to look at it.

"A picture of you?"

Mello turned it over.

"'Dear Mello...' Ex-girlfriend find you on the street? Cuss you out in front of--"

"Near gave it to me." Mello's voice was flat. He still stared at the ceiling, gun smoking in the hand now resting in his lap.

"...Oh."

"Yeah." Matt winced; he could hear Mello's teeth grinding from across the room. "He told me to my face--he said I--he said I'd f-f--fa--" His hand started shaking and Matt backed up, ready to dive behind the chair.

"Dude, Mello, calm down--don't shoot anything, it's not gonna help you--"

"Just. Get. Out."

Matt obeyed.

He sat in the spare bedroom, listening to Mello try to control his breathing in the next room, and sighed. He pulled his Gameboy out of his pocket and began to play absently, wishing he had some way to cheer Mello up. Unfortunately, unresearched attempts at this were rather like playing a game of Russian Roulette except with five bullets. If only Mello could be made to see that Near wasn't perfect, that he had qualities that Mello could easily surpass. He was sure Near had them. Near had to fail in _some_ way.

Suddenly, it came to him. Grinning, he switched off the Gameboy and hurried into the other room, where Mello now lay stretched out on the couch, his hood over his eyes.

Matt bent next to him. "Hey, Mello," he said. "Guess what?"

There was a long pause. The muscles in the lower half of Mello's face clenched. "/What, Matt?"

"Near - he's really _pale_ isn't he?"

"...Matt, if you're about to say what I think you're about to say..."

"He's pale! Like, all over! And _pale_ rhymes with--"

"_If you say it, I will shoot_."

Something that felt suspiciously like a gun barrel dug into Matt's ribs. Matt hadn't even seen Mello's hand move.

"...kay."

Matt scurried back to the bedroom to the safety of his Gameboy, leaving Mello on the couch.

Mello held the picture up to the light. Matt's attempt to cheer him up should only have pissed him off more, but now, thinking about it, he realized he felt a little better. A second after he felt like an idiot for feeling better, but that was still better - and more productive - than feeling homicidal.

Mello let the picture fall to the floor. He owed Matt sushi for this.


End file.
